Here’s more from the Caps just so we’re 100 percent clear on what MacLellan’s role actually was at the time:

MacLellan, who served as a pro scout for the Capitals from 2000-03 and then was promoted to director of player personnel, assists and advises vice president and general manager George McPhee in all player-related matters. MacLellan also oversees the club’s professional scouting staff and works closely with the team’s American Hockey League affiliate, the Hershey Bears, who won the Calder Cup in 2006.

MacLellan had worked in professional scouting since 2000 and always viewed his role as supporting the boss. He offered opinions at meetings, a frequent presence in war rooms and at draft tables, but ultimately decisions were made above his pay grade.

“You try to help him make the best decisions he can make,” MacLellan said. “Your role is different. It’s not to come in and set a tone for an organization.”

McPhee explained that Forsberg was blocked at the NHL level because “the right side is pretty stacked right now with Ovechkin, Brouwer, Fehr, Ward, and Wilson. It’s a pretty thick group right there.”

He also was unwilling to go into the details on how the team viewed Forsberg’s development. “To be blunt, if there was something wrong with the player, I wouldn’t tell you anyway,” McPhee said. “I don’t believe it’s the right thing to do: beating up people when they leave.”

Now here’s the fascinating part. McPhee reported during the conversation that the team’s entire scouting department, which MacLellan and Mahoney oversaw, was unanimous in the decision.

McPhee:

You talk about all those things. They’re never easy decisions. It takes some guts to do deals sometime. We have a real good group of pro scouts and amateur scouts. You sift through it, ruminate over it at night, you come back in, talk about it some more, and the vote was unanimous to do it. I make them vote independently without any influence. Write it out, put it on a piece of paper, and then I read through [their responses]. It was unanimous to do it.

So while McPhee did the dealing with Predators’ GM David Poile and ultimately signed off on the trade, it was MacLellan, Mahoney, and the scouts they oversaw who told McPhee this was a good thing for the team.

You see, I believe the Caps were going to trade Forsberg at some point no matter what, internally souring on the prospect, a player they no longer viewed as a top center in the making.

Scouts I’ve spoken with have mixed opinions. Some still view him as a top center in the making, at least a No. 2, but others are concerned by his foot speed. The latter is what concerned Washington.

We shall see who has the last word here. Forsberg may make the Caps rue the day they dealt him to Nashville. For that, we’ll have to circle back here in three to four years to rekindle this conversation.

A year and some change later, the Capitals promoted MacLellan to GM and Mahoney to Assistant GM.

So yes, MacLellan is responsible for the trade to some extent.

The next question then becomes: What went so wrong with that deal? Mahoney has been in charge of a scouting department that has been phenomenal at drafting in the last five years, finding late first-round gems like Evgeny Kuznetsov and Andre Burakovsky. During MacLellan’s tenure as Assistant GM, McPhee made many big deadline deals that helped the team.